For those who are serious about working on their blog/website SEO, then it time that you learn how to get backlinks and how it will be very beneficial to your blog/website.

What are Backlinks?

In SEO terms, it a link from an another website back to your site. So for example, say I link Home & Horizon blog, that is me linking to Lauretta’s site where it would be considered a backlink. (serious go visit Lauretta site, she’s awesome.)

What the big deals with backlinks?

• They will send you traffic to your site. If someone clicks on that link, it will automatically send you traffic to your site.
• It will help you rank better on Google. If you are able to have a link from a quality website, then Google will pick up on this and will make the site rank better on SERP (search engine result page).

There are more than two reasons why getting backlinks is a big deal, but those two I feel are the most important.

So why are they so important?

Remember me saying that Google is clever? The kind of cleverness that we couldn’t outsmart. Well when Google send the little bots to crawl your site, they will look for both inbound and outbound links. It another way for them to judge and to see how important and relevant your site is and where to rank it. It can be said the more backlinks you have, the more it will consider your blog/site to be important.

What the difference between inbound and outbound links?

• Inbound links: links that are pointing your blog/website from another site.
• Outbound links: links that I create that links to another blog/website. Like what I did for Lauretta site from my earlier example.

Anything else I should know about backlinks?

Yes, they do hold value and importance. But before you go all crazy with those backlinks there are a few things you need to know:

No Follow:

Back to this old gem again. Very briefly No Follow links doesn’t help the site you are linking to SEO. Google will see it as a block and will not consider it when they are ranking that site.

Do Follow:

A do follows link work in opposite direction. A do follow link will be telling Google to count it this link and website. It helps the other website rank well on SERP.

Though do hold up –  as I said in my No Follows guide. No follow links should only be used on paid links and on untrusted content.

If a brand has paid you money to write an article on something and given you a link (essentially an outbound link) –  then you should always use no follow as it will be picked up by Google and your site can be penalized.

An example I can give you for this, recently I changed around a few of my plugins and accidentally deactivated my ‘no-follow’ plugin. This makes all links no-follow, it’s a little easier for me to do it this way. Anyway, I received an email telling me that I had a bad link to a certain blog post from a company, what it was – I had a link that was essentially a do follow links and the person who emailed me, said it was bad for their SEO. They asked me to change it to no follow. No problem and it swiftly got sorted. The moral of the story is that all links need to be careful and for you make sure that you are following the no/do follow rules. I off course activated my ‘no-follow’ plugin.

Low-Quality Links:

Low-quality links are in the name. It links that will do you more harm than good. A link that lacks relevance and from an untrusted source. It often links to black hat SEO technique and often it outbound links that it basically spamming you and being a bit rubbish with your SEO.

How do I get these lovely backlinks then?

Getting backlinks from other blog/website is very easy. Here are some easy methods to get those love backlinks.

• Comments on other people blog/website.
• Link to the other bloggers. (*cough*me*cough*)
• Write a valuable guest post that will link you back to your site.
• Create a link on Social Media platforms.
• Create a link on various forums and online groups.
• Ask a blogger to link back to you.
• Look for a roundup or sharing links blog post.
• Look for high authority directories – directories that won’t send you low-quality links.
• Put a link in your email signature.
• Link back to a relevant blog post.

One last tip with building backlinks:

Don’t be afraid to do both inbound and outbound links. Google won’t penalize you for doing a few links. No, they will only penalize you if the links turn into spam and are filled with low quality. So be brave and get a link out there.

I think I have now said everything about backlinks. I hope you have enjoyed my guide to backlinks. As always feel free to ask any questions in the comments box.